Today, many financial and insurance institutions provide online access to bank accounts, insurance policies, or the like. Additionally, such institutions may provide a current customer or a potential customer with the ability to apply for a loan or policy online. Online applications may be beneficial to such institutions, because they eliminate the cumbersome physical process that requires the customer to request a paper copy of an application, fill out the paper copy, sign the paper copy, and submit the paper copy back to the financial institution at which point it may be reviewed.
Instead, these online applications may allow a customer to log onto the web site of the institution and fill out the application electronically, for example. After entering the appropriate data, the data may be automatically dumped into an electronic version of the application. The customer may then elect to print out the application and sign or the customer may elect to provide an electronic signature, or e-signature, and submit the entire application electronically. If the customer elects to provide an e-signature, the customer may be asked to verify that he or she may in fact be the signor by entering a username and/or password. In some instances, the customer may click a button to verify he or she may in fact be the signor. At this point, the document has been signed, and the institution may begin to process the application. Unfortunately, the lack of security in verifying the identity of a customer makes automating the entire application process risky especially for loans or insurance policies that provide a substantial amount of monetary obligations.